20 February 2018

15 February 2018

The Sun bathes our planet in the light and heat it needs to sustain life, but it also bombards us with dangerous charged particles in solar wind. Our magnetic field largely shields from this onslaught, but like many a relationship, it's somewhat complicated. Thanks to ESA's Swarm mission the nature of this Earth–Sun coupling has been revealed in more detail than ever before.

13 February 2018

07 February 2018

ESA's Aeolus satellite has been particularly tricky to build. One of the main stumbling blocks has been getting its lasers to work in a vacuum, but recent tests on the satellite show that the vacuum or temperature of space won't get in the way of Aeolus measuring Earth's winds.